Here to Stay

Everyone in favor of a more open border policy for immigration, raise your hands. Good. Now leave them up so we can get your names and addresses as potential adoptees or sponsors for the thousands of children. While we’re at it, all Democrats in the room raise your hands. That’s good, too. Glad to see you’re volunteering to help out.

This “adopt an immigrant” program is not real…yet. However, it’s going to have to come. The fact is whether we have 36,000 unaccompanied children from Central America or 90,000, as some predict there will be, they are probably here to stay. First, there’s the humanitarian perspective. Second, but more importantly, there’s already a 350,000 case backlog on deportations. What that means is that the $2 billion President Obama has asked for to help secure the border and to speed up deportations, will be too little, too late. Tough, but meaningless and insincere, talk now.

However, his earlier edict suspending deportations and implying that if you get here, you can stay here, did the job and it’s irreversible. Start working on programs to assimilate instead of dump illegals, particularly children, all over the country (coming soon to a town near you). By the way, I saw a story over the weekend about a young illegal immigrant who is going to sue the US government for the way she was treated. We can expect more of that.

In the meantime, President Obama has declared he’ll settle the immigration issue by executive order if Congress (meaning the Republican-controlled House) doesn’t agree to an amnesty program for the millions already here. Democrats have doubled down on the issue and are sticking with the plan. Nancy Pelosi, visiting the border, declared “we’re all Americans” and said how she’d like to “take” one of the precious children. As a pet, no doubt. She could give them to one of her servants if it doesn’t work out. Also, some Republicans (McCain, Rubio, Graham and others), chasing mythical Latino votes, say the comprehensive immigration plan has to go through now. I hope they’ll adopt some kids, too.

Again, in the meantime, immigration “activists,” whatever that means, are occupying Washington, D.C. congressional buildings to protest the lack of a comprehensive plan. Many of them want open borders anyway. The government union, SEIU, also is harassing a California congressman for similar reasons. The problem is that laws don’t mean much when the chief executive chooses, on a political basis, which aspects of each law he wants to enforce, even if it is a law that he signed (ObamaCare, for instance). So, no matter how tough you make the law, it’s a matter of enforcement, and there’s no indication by any measure, past or present, that any new law will be enforced except for political purposes. That’s the crux of the matter.

The new proposal passed a year ago by the Senate with bipartisan support is not a bad law. It’s a needed law just as it was needed several years ago when President George W. Bush pushed for it. It’s comprehensive and covers the 11 million illegals here now, future employment needs, border enforcement and many other issues. No one trusts that the border issue will be enforced. The presidential edict to stop deportations was designed as a political move to force the issue. It backfired.

Now, we have a border out of control, border agents doing everything but protecting the border from the real bad guys (drug cartel members and terrorists) and little action except to send in some lawyers for the illegals. Legal immigration, by the way, hasn’t stopped. We still admit 1 million who can seek citizenship and another 1.4 million for so-called temporary employment. Studies have shown there are no labor shortages (wages have remained flat), not even a technical employment problem. Not only that a more recent study showed that the majority of the new jobs created in the past six years went to immigrants, not to U.S. citizens.

As noted, we need immigration reform. However, the federal government has to show that it can manage the problems it has now. It has not done that. Not being able to play the game well, they think that reshuffling the deck will improve their performance. Of course, we can always annex Mexico and Central America and the problems would go away. Yanqui come home.

Opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of Gabber publishers, staff or advertisers.

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